EPRI Demonstration of an Autonomous Site Characterization Vehicle - 21313

A substantial effort is applied in performing radiological characterization of structures and land areas during decommissioning of a nuclear facility. This includes multiple surveys of land areas and large structures to support eventual site release under the Multi Agency Survey and Site Investigation Manual (MARSSIM) [1]. These surveys are typically performed using manually delivered systems, which is time consuming and labor intensive. Radiological surveys intentionally follow a prescribed protocol with respect to areas covered, scan speeds, responses to elevated readings, required detector offsets, the need for repeat measurements, etc. Based on these attributes, combined with the repetitive effort of performing surveys over large areas, automation of radiological characterization techniques has a high potential to be successful and promises substantial benefit. The Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) has performed a project that resulted in the development and demonstration of an autonomous site characterization system. This EPRI project focused on building surfaces and the surfaces of large land areas as these configurations lend themselves more readily to automated survey. The project included: - Identification of the requirements for an autonomous site characterization system; - A review of commercially available system determined that no fully adequate system was identified. The project developed a complete system that utilized commercially available detectors and an existing self driving vehicle previously developed by EPRI. The system was demonstrated at the Kewaunee nuclear power plant site and included: - Autonomous surveys of floor areas inside the Auxiliary Building at Kewaunee after manually controlled mapping of the survey areas. - For land areas, the vehicle autonomously surveyed areas using travel paths which had been preprogrammed onto an internet available map of area. In this case, GPS coordinates from the preprogramming were used for navigation by the vehicles guidance system. This paper summarizes the characterization system development and system demonstration which was published in an EPRI report in 2020 [2]. (authors)